Book publisher to speak at inaugural Barry County Bake Off and Dessert Benefit Auction

Kaitlyn McConnell, Springfield resident and Ozarks Alive digital magazine publisher, will be a featured guest speaker at the inaugural Barry County Bake Off and Dessert Benefit Auction, hosted by The Troutman Foundation, on Nov. 22.

McConnell recently published a book that she calls “a labor of love.” Part pie-cookbook, part historical narrative, “The Ozarks Pie Project Diary” is the result of almost twoyears of weekly Sunday afternoon trial-and-error with vintage Ozarks pie recipes found in cookbooks gathered from every corner of the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.

An avid baker since she was young (when layer-cakes caught her fancy), McConnell has been collecting vintage Ozarks cookbooks from flea markets for the past several years. A particular favorite, she said, is one published by The Barry County Homemakers in 1981.

“I love the typewritten recipes and the hand-drawn illustration on the cover of that particular cookbook,” she said.

Until McConnell had what she describes as “a moment of divine intervention,” her flea market cookbook finds simply took up shelf space.

“I mostly collected old community cookbooks for the data they contained: just one more way for me to preserve Ozarks’ history,” said McConnell, whose digital magazine, Ozarks Alive, is dedicated to the preservation of Ozarks culture.

“Then, one day, I realized that baking and cooking themselves are a form of storytelling, because food itself is a way our different cultures are defined,” McConnell said.

McConnell decided to begin trying a different recipe from her cookbook collection each week, then posting a photo of each week’s endeavor on her Facebook page. She began in early 2024, she said.

“I decided to focus on pie recipes, since pie-baking seems to have played a large part in our Ozarks heritage,” she said.

McConnell refers to the rich history of Ozarks pie suppers, once used as fundraisers to meet a pressing need in a community.

An 1897 edition of the Cassville Republican reports, “The pie supper Wednesday night was well attended,” with proceeds “used to secure lights for the schoolhouse.”

McConnell included this bit of Ozarks history, plus much more, in her new book.

“My first Facebook post was Sour Cream Apple pie, a recipe I found in an old Carl Junction community cookbook,” McConnell said. “I baked it according to the recipe, but I felt like it was missing something — some kind of topping.”

McConnell said she received an immediate and overwhelming response to her first Facebook post from her readers.

“Within four hours, I had the name of the person who had submitted the Sour Cream Apple Pie recipe to the Carl Junction cookbook,” McConnell said.

McConnell said the recipe’s originator told her that the cookbook publisher had forgotten to include part of the recipe: the all-important pie topping.

Since that first Facebook pie post, McConnell said she has baked approximately 150 different pies, using 113 different recipes from a wide variety of her vintage cookbooks.

McConnell said about a third or half of the recipes that she tried were excellent — amazing, even — and perfect just as they were written.

“There was another chunk of recipes that I called ‘OK,’ but not something I’d bake again,” she said.

At the bottom end of the spectrum were recipes for pies that went immediately into the trash can, she said.

McConnell suspects the failures can be attributed to the imprecise measurements used in some of the old recipes: “a small can of this,” or a “little of that,” for example.

McConnell said she tried some of the recipes multiple times, tinkering with them in hopes of getting them to turn out right, or adjusting the ingredients a little bit to suit her own tastes.

One such recipe was Barry County resident Margie (or Marge) Inman’s Blackberry Buttermilk pie recipe, McConnell said.

“I wanted so badly for that recipe to work, because the combination of blackberries and buttermilk intrigued me,” she said.

McConnell said she made the recipe four times, with each iteration a bit better than the previous one.

“I love how the crisp berry flavor complements the sweet filling,” she said.

McConnell, who has Celiac disease, said all of the recipes in her cookbook can be modified using gluten-free substitutes.

“For example, I changed some of the recipes to include cornstarch for thickening, instead of flour,” she said.

McConnell said her mission with pie-baking, though, is about much more than just baking a good pie. It’s about bringing communities together.

“Today, when we’re so divided, something as simple as getting together over a piece of pie is a way of building relationships, a way of letting people know we care about them,” she said.

McConnell even believes that a perfect pie crust is negotiable.

“A cracked pie crust still tastes good,” she said. “And, if you want to use store-bought pie crusts, go right ahead. That’s not what’s important.”

McConnell said even if someone doesn’t really care about baking, her book contains much more than recipes.

“The book is a diary, a record of past days in the Ozarks, with pies as the focus,” she said.

The Ozark Pie Project Diary spotlights the history of Ozarks pie suppers and profiles a few nowgone Ozarks pie-bakers, with McConnell’s narrative running alongside the tried and tasted 48 vintage pie recipes she selected for publication. Narrowing down the number of recipes to 48 was the hardest part of her project, she said.

McConnell, an eighth-generation Ozarker with roots in Dade and Webster Counties, began publishing Ozarks Alive in 2015 and has since written hundreds of articles about people, places and history across the region. She’s also published two Ozarks Guidebooks, and was honored with the Missouri Division of Tourism’s Media Navigator award in 2024.

McConnell credits numerous people for helping with her pie project, including her friend, Aaron Scott, for designing the book’s template.

McConnell will speak about the history of Ozarks pie suppers and the makings of her personal pie project at The Barry County Bake Off and Dessert Benefit Auction, where The Ozarks Pie Project Diary will be available for purchase. To pre-order, people may visit: https:// www.ozarksalive.com/ store/p/the-ozarks-pieproject- diary. The fundraising event will be held Saturday, November 22, at the Crowder College Community Building at 4020 N. Main in Cassville. A light dinner will be available, beginning at 5 p.m., for $5 per person.

Music will be provided, courtesy of husband-and wife-duo, Scott and Cindy Edwards, of Springfield. The pie and cake benefit auction, conducted by Cassville Auctioneer Donnie Stumpff, will begin around 6 p.m., with proceeds to benefit The Cassville Pantry and The Generations Project, in Cassville. More information about the event can be found on the Cassville Democrat’s Facebook page.